Hayden Panettiere has publicly come out as bisexual for the first time, using the release of her debut memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, to say out loud what she says she had kept private for years. The 320-page book arrived May 19, 2026, and the actress said the disclosure came only now, at 36.
She said it was something she was never able to share before and added that it was sad she had to wait until she was 36 years old to claim that part of herself in public. Panettiere said she began dating women at a very, very young age, a detail that gives the memoir’s most personal revelation its sharpest edge: the identity was there long before the public statement.
The memoir is broader than a coming-out story. Published by Grand Central Publishing, it traces childhood exploitation, postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, addiction, and relationships that unfolded over two decades in the entertainment industry. Panettiere also writes about temporarily relinquishing custody while seeking treatment and about opioid and alcohol addiction that nearly derailed her career.
That material arrives after years in which Panettiere had already spoken publicly about recovery and postpartum depression, including in an earlier interview tied to her life with Wladimir Klitschko. She is best known for Heroes, which ran from 2006 to 2010, and Nashville, which ran from 2012 to 2018, and her memoir now folds those years of fame into a much darker account of what was happening away from the camera.
The hardest pages appear to be the ones about Brian Hickerson, the relationship she describes as abusive. Panettiere said she was broken and vulnerable when she met him, and the book says his behavior subjected her to years of physical and emotional harm. That sits beside her earlier public disclosure in 2022 that she had battled opioid and alcohol addiction, making the memoir less a new confession than a fuller account of how long she says she was carrying pain in public and in private.
She has said she feels like one of the most misunderstood people, and that the book holds nothing back. She also narrated her own audiobook, which runs 8 hours and 47 minutes, giving her own voice to a story that had been split between tabloid speculation and partial disclosures for years. The question now is less whether she will say more than whether this memoir finally gives her the room to be believed on her own terms.
